In setting a national goal of providing high-speed train service to 80 percent of Americans by 2035, President Obama challenged himself and Congress to come up with a way to finance the biggest transportation program since the Interstate Highway System.
The president called on Congress to “redouble” efforts to rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure and advance high-speed rail (HSR) even as it cuts elsewhere. He framed the issue as part of our generation’s “Sputnik moment” where the world has changed and government investment is needed to generate growth and stimulate private innovation.
“We do big things,” he said, wrapping HSR in the mantle of other federal initiatives, such as Transcontinental Railroad initiated by Abraham Lincoln and the highway system inaugurated by Dwight Eisenhower, that transformed American life.
Obama can start by submitting to Congress a radically reformed six-year surface transportation appropriations bill to replace the expiring act known as SAFETEA-LU, as we argued in a recent memo.
SAFETEA-LU has already been lambasted by Congress’ own advisory group, the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, as directionless and dysfunctional.
The commission has pointed out that $24 billion was appropriated to more than 5,000 congressional “earmarks.” That means that each member of Congress got to pick an average of 10 projects for their districts without any outside review. Such earmarking has made highway funding a poster child of the kind of pork-barrel spending that House leaders – and many Tea Party-backed House Republicans – vow to slash.
So here’s the President’s chance to cut government waste while securing long-term HSR funding. The new bill should allow money collected through the Highway Trust Fund to flow to HSR. Eliminating earmarks and such peripheral programs as Safe Routes to Schools could free up $5 billion a year for rail construction – or $30 billion over the bill’s lifetime – without requiring an increase in the federal gas tax, which is an anathema to Congressional Republicans.
The administration should also think of creative ways to leverage public monies to seed private capital for HSR construction. It was great to hear the president allude in his speech to private investment as a way to finance his rail program. We need to hear more as Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood develops tangible ways to leverage private capital, including capital promised by foreign train builders.
Using federal money to seed private-sector investment has long been advocated by John Mica (R-Fla.), the new chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Mica, who is responsible for drafting the next surface transportation bill, could be a constructive partner with the Obama administration.
Mica supports “true” high-speed rail as a transformational technology and has been critical of the administration’s allocations of federal stimulus funds to higher-speed conventional rail projects.
We have shared his concern that the administration, in its first round of grants a year ago, spread funds that would marginally improve passenger train speeds on shared track with freight railroads. Since then, the administration has placed much more emphasis on getting a dedicated high-speed route under construction between Tampa and Orlando and jumpstarting California’s high-speed line between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Mica wants to use private capital to underwrite high-speed rail development in the Northeast Corridor. He is holding a hearing today in Manhattan where he will take testimony from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, Thomas Hart of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association and Petra Todorovich of the Business Alliance for Northeast Mobility.
Obama demonstrated on Tuesday his commitment to the vision of high-speed rail. Mica can turn this vision into funded reality in a divided government. And Ray LaHood, a former Republican congressman who knows Mica quite well, says he is open to finding common ground. How these gentlemen interact over the next six months will bear close attention.
